


Cradle to the Grave

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Family, Gen, Missing Scene, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: Sigrid organises what remains of her family in response to her mother's final tape.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Cradle to the Grave

Sigrid took a piece of twine between her teeth, then gathered her hair into a bunch. The usual huge, fluffy cloud would not do today. Not when there was work to be done. She tied it into a ponytail, out of the way, and began rolling up her sleeves. She had already delegated what she needed to; Mark was going ahead, finding a good place for them stop on their way to make a new camp. Anya and Bern were organising the food for each group, trying to make the load as light as possible without letting anyone go hungry. Chotsani and Ole would make sure the children were ready and get them moving as soon as possible. Winter was getting the horse carts ready. Sigrid’s first port of call was to help Lisette and her boys take down the tents.

“What do you think, Maman?” Frederick said.

“Ask Sigrid,” she nodded at her as she approached to help him take the pegs from the strings.

Frederick repositioned himself to face her, and readied his question. It was still odd hearing him defer to her, her senior by a year. He had always been a bossy kid, but he didn't dispute her leadership. “Antoine and I could pick up the supplies that your Mamma said were coming.” Seeing that she was about to object, he added hurriedly, “We’d be careful. We’d make sure we weren’t followed. They should be there by now – she said this afternoon in her tape.”

“ _If_ there is anything coming,” Sigrid frowned, pulling the tent poles out and bundling them together. She wasn’t so sure. “I don’t trust it, Fred. Even if the supplies are there, Jure might have _put_ something there. Something to track us. Listen to us. No. You will not go. And we don’t need it. Automatic rifles, gas masks? We confront no-one. We need no such things. By the time the Society finds this place, it will be like we were never here.”

Easier said than done. It wasn’t enough this time to flee and bury everything else. The Society and their dogs would comb these woods clean in search of them – there could be no trace. She had Ji-Yeon working on this. She was the creative sort, and when Sigrid checked in, she discovered that she had enlisted Tatiana to stage a red herring some miles south-west, and was collaborating with Bern and Anya to mask their former presence at the true campsite.

“You are sure it will work?” she asked.

“I can make it look very convincing,” Ji-Yeon said. Sigrid believed her. She had faked her own death once before, after all.

“Sigrid,” Antoine called. When he saw he had caught her attention, he slapped the crate next to him, stamped with an ugly red ‘KR’ and said, “What should I do with this?”

“Bury it,” she said. “Shift digging with Heidi.”

When she had a minute, she look a long breath through her nose and back out again. She craned her neck back, tilting her face to the sky. She could hear her mother scolding her in her mind’s eye. Excessive sighing. Standing still when there was work to be done, a family to organise. What would Mamma take issue with today? _You should be forcing Anya to prioritise your way instead of letting her use her own expertise to her advantage_. _You shouldn’t leave Lisette free to give orders to her sons without you present, or she will be running the Cradle when your back is turned. Communing with nature should not come at the expense of the group._

Oh, yes. And--

_Sigrid, why aren’t you arming the children and fertilising the soil with your blood, like I asked?_

“Sigrid.”

“What’s wrong?” came out instead of ‘What is it?’

Ole looked just a little bit amused at that. “Nothing,” he said, quite reassuringly. “All of the children are packed and ready to go. We set off in three minutes, well ahead of schedule. But you’ve got a look in your eye.”

She looked into the distance. She kept imaging soldiers weaving through the trees, black Kevlar head-to-toe. What if Mamma’s timing was wrong? What if Jure had given her a false time? “I’m just thinking,” she said.

“That’s what I was worried about,” he said, and he was wearing the expected wry smile when she looked at him. He sobered at her unmoved expression. “You made the right decision.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know?” he repeated. “How do I know that sending our children to face their deaths is wrong?”

She winced. Even knowing that she had thought the same thing mere moments ago, she came to her mother’s defence. “That’s not what she said…”

“She said we were to pick up rifles and take shots at their riot shields while they surrounded our camp. She all but instructed you to become a martyr for her cause. If we are dead to her, then let us be dead to her.” He said it with a conviction that she envied.

Yes, she had made her decision, put the argument that had felt like it would never end to rest with a confidence that the others were eager to follow. She had known, after they listened to the tape, that there was very little time to lose, so she had put an end to the bickering that might have stalled them until it was too late to either run or make a stand. But ever since, she had been racked with guilt. Mamma trusted her to look after the Cradle – and she was doing that, but not in the way she wanted. Not for the great cause that Sigrid had never had a chance to comprehend, not as someone who had never lived in the Society. Was her perspective too limited? Should she be putting more faith in her mother, in her mission, in her Hand?

She sighed. “I don’t know if I can do this on my own, Ole.”

“You’re not alone. We are a family, and we will protect each other,” he put a hand on her shoulder. “That is what the Cradle is for, even if your mother has forgotten that.”

“I want to hold Sigrid’s hand!” Greta said, palm outstretched in her direction. Her brother, silently sucking his thumb, held out his free hand for Sigrid’s other. Nico was never to be left out of anything Greta was a part of.

Ole took it instead, gently steering the siblings away. “You can’t hold Sigrid’s hand. She has to help everybody put the camp away. She’ll catch up with us soon enough, won’t you?”

“That’s right,” she said, forcing a smile for the little ones. Nico broke from Ole and hugged her legs, before popping his thumb back into his mouth. And now she’d told the children, so she had to keep that promise. Well played, Ole.

“We’re ready to go, Sigrid,” Nell told her.

She nodded, intending to move on to other things – she didn’t have time to deal with _everyone_ , especially not people who were officially no longer her problem – but Ole came to stand beside her, having returned the children to Chotsani’s care. He had his hands in his pockets, and looked sad. “You’re sure about this?” he asked. He had already asked.

Nell nodded, again. “This worked fine while we were still fairly close to Oslo and could maintain our check-ins, but going totally off the grid – that would be hard to come back from. And…” she paused. She was perhaps thinking of what happened to people who were proven to be part of the Cradle. The disappearances. The untimely deaths. The stays in medical facilities that nobody was quite sure actually existed. “I still want to see my sister again, someday. I can’t do that here,” she said finally.

“I probably won’t see you again,” Ole said, a little choked, and he opened his arms for a hug. “Good luck.”

“You too,” Nell said.

Sigrid thought the unspoken chaser to that was _You will need it more than I will_.

Ji-Yeon put the finishing touches on her scene last, when most of the groups had departed the campsite already. Lisette and Antoine had gone ahead in the group that followed the children. Bern, Anya, and Yelena had been in the most recent group covering the tracks of the ones ahead of them as they did. Frederick was keeping watch to the south, in case the soldiers descended on them quicker than anticipated.

They were leaving the 4x4 behind. It had not been a “gift” from KR Development, so they were not worried it was bugged, but it was troublesome to fuel and the tracks were much too conspicuous. It had come with Margrethe, and that made it perfect for their purposes. Ji-Yeon had opened the driver door and splattered the inside with chicken blood. When that was mostly dry, she spread around dirt and leaves, as if it had been tracked through by numerous animals. Finally – and this was the true genius of it – she put some of the raw meat that Anya had not had time to preserve in the car, to actually attract animals. She also left the chicken carcass in the campsite, to be torn at by scavenging animals. Ravens were most likely, but if some mammals were also drawn in, that was ideal, as their footprints and scent would cover everything human that the IID’s hounds might pick up. As a finishing touch, Ji-Yeon keyed the car, making four long scratches in the paint like a great beast had dragged its claws across it. She stamped the keys into the dirt, and beamed.

 _If we are dead to you, Mamma, then let us be dead to you_ , she repeated Ole’s words to herself. Then she rounded up Frederick and they started towards the lake, where any tracks they and their family had left behind would disappear into the water, and they would be alone in the woods of Hedmark with only the Bergkonge for company.


End file.
